A long, shiny-black, stretch limousine is parked in front of the Redmont Hotel. Two men, one black and one white and both a long way from young, walk out of the lobby of the hotel and into the spacious passenger seating area of the limo. They sit next to each other, talking softly. And it's me, sitting a few feet across from them, in a condition not many journalists like to admit.

I am star-struck.

The Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth preaches. Amen, Brother!

I'm watching two of the most important figures in Birmingham civil rights history have a discussion right in front of me. And it's just me, the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth and former Birmingham Mayor David Vann. Nobody else. The limo driver is up front, separated from us by a glass window. For the next hour, we'll make our way north, toward Camp McDowell in Winston County, for the opening retreat of the 1996 class of Leadership Birmingham.

Each year, until they could do so no more, Shuttlesworth and Vann gave first-person narratives about their roles in the civil rights movement in Birmingham to an audience of business executives, community volunteers, public officials and others who make up the annual classes of Leadership Birmingham.

That year, I had been asked to moderate this Shuttlesworth-Vann panel (as if these men needed a moderator), so I hitched the limo ride with them.

I'd have time to ask Shuttlesworth and Vann questions -- to "prepare" for the panel discussion. The more they talked, the less I wanted to interrupt. Mostly, I just sat back, watched and listened as these two civil rights legends remembered and joked with each other and renewed their long friendship once again.

That was one of the last years Shuttlesworth and Vann would speak in tandem. Vann's health, already failing then, continued to decline, and he died in June 2000. Shuttlesworth lives on, but he has serious health problems.

When people think of Birmingham, among the first images that come to mind are of the long civil rights struggle -- the Freedom Riders beaten to a pulp, lunch-counter protests, separate bathrooms and fountains for "whites" and "coloreds." And, yes, firehoses turned on full pressure and snarling police dogs. A downtown church bombed, and four little girls dead.

What also should come to mind is the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the landmark federal legislation that outlawed segregation in schools, public places and employment. The law recognizes the value of all peoples, regardless of race or gender.

All peoples. Black. White. Brown. Striped, if they exist. Women and men. The way our world should be.

When people think about the 1964 Civil Rights Act, invariably the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s name comes up, as it should. But so, too, should Fred Shuttlesworth's. Without Shuttlesworth, it's unlikely King would have come to Birmingham in 1963. Without Shuttlesworth, it's doubtful Birmingham would have played the pivotal role it did in the victory struggle for civil rights. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 might have been the Civil Rights Act of 1966. Or -- and it's possible -- not at all.

Sadly, we have a chip on our shoulder in Birmingham, preferring to bury our colorful history rather than embrace it.

Now, thanks to an idea from Mayor Larry Langford, we have an opportunity to do something wonderfully decent: rename the Birmingham International Airport after Fred Shuttlesworth.

"In Birmingham, what people have to understand is what Rev. Shuttlesworth did and went through was for all of us, not just black folks," Langford says, and the mayor is right on.

Yeah, I can hear a few folks already. Some of them left their racist smudges on our blogs after Langford announced his airport idea: "The 'Git rid of Whitey' program is now out in the open and in full swing," offered somebody who calls himself "potsandpans2." Or, as BhamCaver wrote: "The Emancipation Prolomation (sic) was 140 years ago! ... So give it a rest already! Or, is it that black people don't want to pull themselves out of the past?" (BhamCaver sounds about right, doesn't it?)

Langford again: "This city needs to do something for this man, to honor what he has done. Birmingham is the conscience of the world because of the sacrifice he and so many others made."

If you don't know about Shuttlesworth, Vann and other Birmingham heroes, find out. A little knowledge won't hurt. (Here's a link to start.)